Rodumna
RODUMNA (Ῥοδοῦμνα), in Gallia, is one of the towns of the Segusiani. (Ptol. 2.8.14.) Rodumna appears in the Table on a road which leads to Lugdunum (Lyon) through Forum Segusianorum. Rodumna is Roanne on the west bank of the Loire, which gave name to the former district of Roannais. [G.L]
A trading city at the head of navigation on the Loire. Goods came from the Rhône valley and the Mediterranean to be sent N and W. Mentioned by Ptolemy and the Peutinger Table, it is cited as a city of the Segusiavi. The rise of this town of merchants, fishermen, and potters dates from the first half of the 1st c. A.D.; it started to decline at the end of the century, probably owing to competition from Lezoux, whose products were sold directly through the Allier valley.
Through excavations on the city boundaries we know roughly the area it covered, N-S between the Boulevard de Belgique and the Rue de Cadore and E-W between the Loire and the swamps that lay this side of the section where the railroad station is today. Thus the city extended along the road from Augustodunum (Autun) to Augustonemetum (Chermont-Ferrand). Its center was probably in the modern De la Livatte quarter, where many remains have been located.
Excavations in 1902 on the site of the Collège Saint-Paul (formerly Saint-Joseph) uncovered a graceful bronze statuette of Minerva and a fine bronze fibula. The site was again explored in 1962-68 and ancient rubbish pockets were found, similar to those discovered in 1958 on the site of the Nouvelle Poste. The original use of these pockets, shaped like funnels or vats with vertical sides and varying in depth (from 0.6 to over 2 m), is still an enigma. The walls of some are hard and brownish, showing that they were used as hearths or rudimentary furnaces. Two had ultimately been used to store clay, rolled into loaves. Among the rubbish were found Gallic coins from the late Republican and Augustan eras, fibulas of Iron Age II and III and the beginning of our era, objects of bronze, iron, and glass, and andirons. There was also a tremendous amount of pottery: from S Gaul, Campanian A, B, and C, Aco ware, Italic amphorae, and local pottery painted in a characteristic and original manner.
In the 1st c. the city produced great quantities of local pottery of Forez and Roannais clay, remarkable for the variety of its shapes, the texture of the paste, and the quality of its decoration. No less than 37 different shapes have been counted, divisible into four groups: vases shaped hike an egg or a truncated cone, goblets, carinated bowls, and bowl-shaped vases known as Roanne vases. The forms range from slender pedestaled vases to low ones. The paste is sometimes delicate, light gray with a darker glaze, sometimes coarse, but some fine pieces vary in color from light yellow to brick red. The patterns, predominantly geometric, may be impressed, engraved, or painted.
Only one inscription has been found, an epitaph discovered in 1820 near the Werlé barracks. Few of the monuments have survived: what may be the remains of baths are near the Place du Château, some potters' kilns are near the Ecole de Musique in the Rue de Cadore. The kilns are 2 m down (covered by a Merovingian necropolis, 6th-7th c.). Pottery found in these kilns is principally everyday ware made of coarse clay; there are no painted vases. Built in the second half of the 1st c., these ovens ceased to be active before the end of the 2d c.; production had become heavy and industrialized before it disappeared.
In 1967-69 several houses in the Rue Gilbertès, in the heart of the Gallo-Roman settlement, yielded many small objects, coins and potsherds. Five strata could be identified, from the 1st c. B.C. (Campanian B and C, local ware, coins of the Segusiavi) to the 3d c. A.D. (everyday pottery, a denarius of Gordianus III). One house, built in the period of Tiberius-Claudius and modified in the 2d c., was apparently abandoned ca. 160-180.
At least two necropoleis have been located. One, excavated in 1893 in the Rue Benoît-Malon, held mainly cremation tombs. Four types of urns were listed: a limestone chest, a lead cylinder inside a copper-bound barrel, a gray clay vase with wavy decoration, and a simple amphora base. But inhumation was also practiced: a wooden coffin was identified by its nails. Among the finds were some statuettes of white terracotta from the workshops of the Allier valley, cast figurines usually representing Venus Anadyomene. In 1873 another necropolis was discovered in the Rue Anatole France; in it were a sarcophagus made of large bricks and several cremation urns.
The collections of Joseph Déchelette, a specialist in Gallo-Roman pottery, are housed in a museum named for him; it also has finds from the excavations. A little museum has been set up near the potters' kilns in the Rue de Cadore.
BIBLIOGRAPHYM. Bessou, “Note préliminaire sur les fouilles de l'Institut St-Joseph,” Celticum 9 (1963) 171; R. Perichon & I. Cabotse, “Analyse d'une fosse ‘à deblais’ de l'Institut St-Joseph à Roanne,” ibid. 189-216; I. Cabotse, Roanne a 2000 ans. Les origines celtiques et gallo-romaines (1965); id. & R. Perichon, “Céramiques gauloises et gallo-romaines de Roanne (Loire),” Gallia 24 (1966) 29-75; A. Bruhl & M. Laglay, “Informations,” Gallia 22 (1964) 425-26; 24 (1966) 488-92; 26 (1968) 564-65; 29 (1971) 411.
M. LEGLAY